He tells great stories about musicians’ lives and illuminates their work with the light of his own experiences.”. “The Rest Is Noise is a long and thrilling ride… writes about music in vivid language humming with intelligence. “ brilliant, hugely enjoyable cultural history.” - Christian Science Monitor He has an almost uncanny gift for putting music into words.” - Economist Ross, who worked on this book for a decade. “It would be hard to imagine a better guide to the maelstrom of recent music than Mr. “Ross is a supremely gifted writer who brings together the political and technological richness of the world inside the magic circle of the concert hall, so that each illuminates the other.” - Lev Grossman, Time Ross enables us to listen more hearingly.” - New York Times Book Review Rilke once wrote of how he learned to stand ‘more seeingly’ in front of certain paintings. “The Rest Is Noise is a great achievement. Coming up: Red China and Mozart! Sonic Youth and Bjork! That crazy John Cage guy!" I haven't made my way past the Roaring 20s and le jazz, but stay tuned for updates. World War One is fought and re-fought by the Second Viennese School and Les Six the emergence and growing madness of the German state are played out, literally, in concert halls and clubs and the first tentative notes of possible national and ethnic harmony are heard amidst the wreckage of the first half of the 20th century. While it is certainly an excellent read for anyone who's into 20th century and contemporary music, what makes it stand out from other well-written books of musical criticism is its ability to tell the story of the 20th century through music. "I only managed to get about 150 pages in before I had to return this book to the library, but I fully intend to go back in three days and check it out again.
We meet the maverick personalities who have defied the classical past, and we follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics on this sweeping tour of twentieth-century history as told through its music. The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern sound, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to bohemian Paris, from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, shows how modern music has pervaded every corner of twentieth-century life. While modern paintings by Picasso and Pollock sell for a hundred million or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring onward still send ripples of unease through audiences yet the influence of modern sound can be felt everywhere. The scandal over modern music has not died down.
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